BRUSSELS— The security alert level for Brussels was lowered Thursday after six days at the maximum level after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, local media reported.
The country’s coordinating unit for threat analysis, an independent organization known as OCAM, scaled its assessment for the Belgian capital from a Level 4 alert – signaling a serious and imminent threat – down to Level 3, which indicates a “serious threat,” according to media reports.
The rest of the country has been at Level 3 since Saturday.
“This is good news for social life and mobility in Brussels, but this is not over, it is only a start,” Rudi Vervoort, who leads the Brussels regional government, told the Belga news agency.
The threat level for Brussels had been raised on Saturday as police searched across Belgium for a suspect in the Paris terrorist attacks, in which 130 people were killed. Several of the suspects have links to Belgium.
Five suspects have been detained in Belgium, while the country has issued an international arrest warrant for a sixth person. Salah Abdeslam, a French citizen who lived in Belgium and is the brother of a suicide bomber in the Paris attacks, is still at large.
Police carried out three raids Thursday on properties in the eastern city of Verviers and in the town of Auvelais, southeast of Brussels. No one was apprehended.
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